The present invention relates to electronic identification systems and more particularly but not exclusively to electronic identification systems for use with vehicle refueling systems.
Vehicle refueling systems, in which a vehicle is provided with a way of identifying itself to a fuel provider, are known from Israel Patent Application Nos. 111,802 and 107,784, both of which are hereby incorporated by reference. These applications deal in essence with a system in which an inductive ring is placed around the upper end of the fuel intake pipe of a vehicle. The ring is connected up to a source of identification information regarding the vehicle, owner, charge account number, type of fuel required and the like. The information is transmitted via the inductive coil to a receiver, which may conveniently be placed on the refueling pipe, and thus relayed to the fuel provider. Such systems are popular with organizations that run large fleets of vehicles and they allow vehicle refueling to be carried out without fuss and charged to a central account and for data concerning refueling operations to be collected.
A difficulty with the prior art as represented by the two patent applications listed, is that if the source of identification information can be removed from the vehicle and taken to another vehicle then the owner of the second vehicle may be able to obtain fuel at someone else""s expense. A previously proposed solution to this problem has been to connect up the system to the vehicle main computer but this introduces the problem of having to reprogram the main computer whenever any changes are made. Furthermore the main computer may itself be stolen.
It should furthermore be borne in mind that the problem is not so serious when the identification source is merely stolen. The lack of the source will become apparent at the latest the next time an attempt is made to refuel the car, and at that point the account can be canceled. What is more serious is if an attempt is made to remove the source, clone it and then replace it. In this case it is not possible to determine that anything is wrong until a statement of account is received. Even at this point such an occurrence may go unnoticed if the vehicle is part of a large fleet or it is a vehicle that is generally heavily used. Even if the problem is spotted It is not certain that compromise of the identification source will be blamed for the occurrence. The driver may initially be blamed for making unauthorized use of the vehicle.
As the identification source is most likely located within the recesses of the vehicle there is no advantage to using a standard tamper evident seal around the chip. The standard tamper evident seal requires visual inspection to determine whether tampering has taken place, and such a product would require regular visual checks inside the fuel intake, which would be unpopular with users.
According to the present invention there is provided an identification device comprising an identification portion, an output portion and a neck separating said identification portion and said connection portion. The identification portion comprises a data store containing identification data. The data store is connected to a data output in said output portion via connectors passing through the neck, and the neck is adapted to be fitted into the structure of an item to be identified, such as a vehicle. The neck has a breaking strain which is lower than that of the remainder of the device so that if an attempt is made to extract the device from the structure then the neck will break. The output of the device may be arranged to output data to a fueling device. The neck has a breaking strain which may be equal to or less than one fifth of that of the remainder of the device, and in a particularly preferred embodiment may be equal to or less than one tenth of the strain.
A preferred embodiment of the device may be inserted into the structure of the vehicle by means of the following steps,
a) inserting a sleeve into a hole in said structure, said sleeve having a cylindrical outer wall with a first diameter and an entrance portion having a second diameter which is smaller than said first diameter,
b) inserting a resilient collar into said neck of said device, said collar defining a diameter larger than said second diameter, and
c) inserting said stem of said device, with said collar, through said entrance portion of said sleeve.